The MIT Security Studies Program launched today a collaborative program with the Harvard Belfer Center to mentor the next generation of foreign policy scholars with support from the Charles Koch Foundation.

Richard Clarke, the former chief counter-terrorism advisor on the National Security Council, expanded on ideas in his new book, “Warnings,” asserting that specialists…can “see the thing buried in the data that other people don’t see.”

“The abductee issue pulls at the heartstrings of the general public in a way that no other issue can,” said Richard Samuels, a Japan specialist and the director of the MIT Center for International Studies.

The Center announces today the third Call for Proposals from the International Policy Lab (IPL), which helps MIT faculty develop the policy implications of their research and thus better inform the global policymaking community.

“The bad news is that denuclearization is a fantasy,” said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at MIT, who has written extensively about North Korea’s nuclear program. ... “The good news is, deterrence can work.”

The MIT International Policy Lab (IPL) sent representatives to participate as observers to the first Conference of Parties (COP-1) to the Minamata Convention on Mercury, through a delegation led by co-faculty director Noelle Selin.